Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to electrostatic discharge and, in particular, to air gap metal tip electrostatic discharge protection.
Description of the Related Art
Today many integrated circuits are highly susceptible to damage from the discharge of static electricity, which has become a critical problem for the electronics industry. Therefore, various electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection circuits must be included in a device to protect the various components in the device.
ESD is the transfer of an electro-static charge between bodies at different electro-static potentials (voltages), caused by direct contact or induced by an electro-static field. Typical ESD protection circuits use an on-chip diode based ESD protection device. Such an on-chip diode ESD device works well for lower frequency currents but in higher frequency circuits such as millimeter wave circuits, the on-chip diode ESD device severely impairs the performance of the millimeter wave circuits because of its' inability to ameliorate the large parasitic capacitance that arises during the high operating frequency.
A conventional diode ESD device's big intrinsic capacitance causes poor circuit and system performance, especially for high-speed applications. Device failures that result from ESD events are not always immediately catastrophic or apparent. Often, the device is only slightly weakened but is less able to withstand normal operating stresses and, hence, may result in a reliability problem. Thus, there is a need for improved ESD protection.